Postmodernism and photoshop 后现代主义与photoshop(2)

后现代主义与photoshop

with such libraries. In addition, both software manufacturers and third parties sell separate collections which work as "plug-ins," i.e. they appear as additional commands and ready-to- use media elements under software's menus. The Web provides a further source of plug-ins and media elements, with numerous collections available for free.

While computer software "naturalizes" the model of authorship as selection from libraries of pre-defined objects, we can already find this model at work with old media, such as magic lantern slides shows. As film historian Charles Musser points out, in contrast to modern cinema where the authorship extends from pre-production to postproduction but does not cover exhibition (i.e., the theatrical presentation of a film is completely standardized and does not involve making creative decisions), in magic lantern slide shows the exhibition was a highly creative act. The magic lantern exhibitioner was in fact an artist who skillfully arranged a presentation of slides which he bought from the distributors. This is a perfect example of authorship as selection: an author puts together an object from the elements which she herself did not create. The creative energy of the author goes into selection and sequencing of elements, rather than into their original design.

Although not all modern media arts follow this authorship model, the technological logic of analog media strongly supports it. Stored using industrially manufactured materials such as film stock or magnetic tape, media elements can be more easily copied, isolated and assembled in new combinations. In addition, various media manipulation machines, such as a tape recorder and a film slicer, make the operations of selection and combination easier to perform. In parallel, we witness the development of archives of various media which enable the authors to draw on already existing media elements rather than always having to record new elements themselves. For instance, in the 1930s German photojournalist Dr. Otto Bettmann started what latter became known as the Bettmann Archive; at the time of its acquisition by Bill Gates's Corbis Corporation in 1995 it contained 16 million photographs, including some of most frequently used images of this century. Similar archives were created for film and audio media. Using "stock" photographs, movie clips and audio recording become the standard practice of modern media production.

To summarize: the practice of putting together a media object from already existing and commercially distributed media elements already existed with old media, but new media technology further standardizes it and makes it much easier to perform. What before involved scissors and glue now involves simply clicking on "cut" and "paste." And, by encoding the operations of selection and combination into the very interfaces of authoring and editing software, new media "legitimizes" them. Pulling elements from